Scottish lawyer, judge, and pioneer anthropologist who explored the origins of language and society. His book, entitled Of the Origin and Progress of Language (6 vol. 1773-92) is typical of Enlightenment thinking in 18th-century Scotland, containing a large body of curious ideas, as well as sober anthropological learning, on the manners and customs of primitive peoples. He believed, contrary to the received opinion of his time, that human history is not a decline from primeval perfection, as portrayed in Genesis, but a slow and painful ascent from imperfection.
Following the 17th-century pioneer of comparative anatomy, Edward Tyson, Monboddo was one of several thinkers who anticipated the principles of Darwinian Evolution notably he related the human to the orangutan, and then traced human development from these origins towards a social state. As part of his evolutionary theory, he believed that children were born with tails, an idea that he never thought necessary to investigate. The notion just grew out of his general idea that orangutan were from the same genus as a human, but a type of human who had failed to develop.